Letter: Healthy nation

As a nurse, I am worried about the American health-care system. It works well if you have insurance coverage or a big income, but millions of Americans do not.

Many families depend on Medicaid and Medicare, so what will they do if we stop funding those programs?

Even a simple illness can cost hundreds, even thousands of dollars. Americans pay, on average, about $6,000 each year for health care, but some people accumulate a lifetime of debt.

Is getting good care when you are sick a right or an individual responsibility? I say both. We need to stay healthy by making better choices like eating the right foods and taking a walk every day.

But when we get sick, we have a right to the same excellent health care whether we are rich or poor.

President Barack Obama was right to do something about reforming our health-care system. He modeled it after Mitt Romney's program (while he was governor of Massachusetts). The Affordable Health Care Act (Obamacare) is a good beginning and a wonderful first step toward a bipartisan approach that prevents disease and cares for the sick.

I fail to see why it is hated so much. Continually reforming and adjusting the Affordable Health Care Act is the only reasonable solution. I vote for keeping what we have and building on it, because I want "the least among us" — our sick, our elderly, our children — to be treated humanely and justly in America no matter who is elected president.